Michael Harrawood wrote:
>This would be a way of starting to answer the question of how Dasein is
>different from being, and also why Heidegger thinks animals are not, or
>do not possess Dasein. He uses the expression "world poor" (in History
>of the Concept of Time and Basic Problems) describing animals because
>they haven't got the founding principle of Worldhood, which is precisely
>that possibility of knowing themselves reflectively, so as to have their
>being at issue for them: this, Heidegger will later say is the foundation
>of human consciousness, language, etc.
It seems to me that two points of Heidegger's thought concerning the
'nature' of man are particularly relevent to this question of the Dasein of
animals. First and foremost, we must not forget that man is the speaking
being, and is alone in this capacity. Man dwells in the house of being,
which is language, and we might conjecture that animals are cast out into
the cold outside of being's dwelling-place. Secondly, and closely related,
man ek-sists, or stands out, of the field of beings on account of his
speech, which brings beings into being's clearing, which is aletheia.
Taken prima facie, there's no reason why animals wouldn't also have
"there-being". But when one remembers that being is there only on account
of the saying of beings, it is impossible for non-articulate animals to
have Dasein. Further, in the Letter on Humanism Heidegger considers
Aristotle's definition of man as rational animal, zoon legon, which
Heidegger takes to mean the animal which speaks. And zoon is not animal
strictly in our sense, because it is closely tied to the idea of living
(zoein = to live). Man is the speaking being which lives.
I have a request: considering that a email-gathering on the subject of
Heidegger might well contain some who have caught Heidegger's etymology
bug, as I have, I wonder whether anyone can help me with two independent
questions:
1) is aletheia related to eleutheria? Does Heidegger ever write of this?
2) in the Spiegel interview he mentions in passing that primordially
"saying" and "having" were the same word (and 'meaning', we might add).
Can anyone shed light on what language he was talking about, or what
people, or what this might generally mean?
Thanks,
Colin F. Wilder
niloc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------
>This would be a way of starting to answer the question of how Dasein is
>different from being, and also why Heidegger thinks animals are not, or
>do not possess Dasein. He uses the expression "world poor" (in History
>of the Concept of Time and Basic Problems) describing animals because
>they haven't got the founding principle of Worldhood, which is precisely
>that possibility of knowing themselves reflectively, so as to have their
>being at issue for them: this, Heidegger will later say is the foundation
>of human consciousness, language, etc.
It seems to me that two points of Heidegger's thought concerning the
'nature' of man are particularly relevent to this question of the Dasein of
animals. First and foremost, we must not forget that man is the speaking
being, and is alone in this capacity. Man dwells in the house of being,
which is language, and we might conjecture that animals are cast out into
the cold outside of being's dwelling-place. Secondly, and closely related,
man ek-sists, or stands out, of the field of beings on account of his
speech, which brings beings into being's clearing, which is aletheia.
Taken prima facie, there's no reason why animals wouldn't also have
"there-being". But when one remembers that being is there only on account
of the saying of beings, it is impossible for non-articulate animals to
have Dasein. Further, in the Letter on Humanism Heidegger considers
Aristotle's definition of man as rational animal, zoon legon, which
Heidegger takes to mean the animal which speaks. And zoon is not animal
strictly in our sense, because it is closely tied to the idea of living
(zoein = to live). Man is the speaking being which lives.
I have a request: considering that a email-gathering on the subject of
Heidegger might well contain some who have caught Heidegger's etymology
bug, as I have, I wonder whether anyone can help me with two independent
questions:
1) is aletheia related to eleutheria? Does Heidegger ever write of this?
2) in the Spiegel interview he mentions in passing that primordially
"saying" and "having" were the same word (and 'meaning', we might add).
Can anyone shed light on what language he was talking about, or what
people, or what this might generally mean?
Thanks,
Colin F. Wilder
niloc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
------------------